Editors' Review

Microsoft Silverlight is a plug-in designed to enhance your video streaming capabilities and improve your overall viewing experience. It generally works in the background, but you can adjust your preferences and other settings from the app's dashboard.

Pros

Configuration options: You can determine Silverlight's behavior in a number of situations by making selections in the app's control panel. For instance, you may choose how and when to update the program, configure your webcam and microphone, and set permissions for certain websites.

Improved video quality: This plug-in does improve the quality of streaming video on your computer. Most of the time you won't even know it's there, as it just integrates into your browser and other video programs to get results.

Cons

Occasional crashes: Even when you're not streaming video, Silverlight can cause your browser to crash. We encountered this problem several times after installing the software, and we were presented with a message stating that Silverlight had encountered a problem. Generally closing the browser and reopening it solved the problem.

Bottom Line

Microsoft Silverlight is a useful program, and certain other services, like Netflix, require it in order to play streaming video. It's not without issues, but it's free, and the improvements in video performance and other capabilities make it worth checking out.

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Publisher's Description

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Now with new mobile device focused implementations of Silverlight, developers and designers can easily take existing code, assets, skills, and tools and deliver superior user experiences on mobile devices. With initial support for Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 (including any S60 based handset) mobile operating systems Silverlight provides broad reach into the mobile space.

Cannot think of any pros for Silverlight. I only know about it because Netflix made the unfortunate decision to use it.

Cons

I don't know if it's the cause of the daily hiccups with video playback on other sites, but on Netflix, Silverlight is a clusterf*ck.

Every five minutes, the video playback lags about 5 seconds behind the audio. When I can tolerate that annoyance long enough, it catches up in a second or two of mildly amusing Charlie Chaplin-esque fast motion. When I cannot tolerate it, having to click and drag the slider to sync video and audio every thirty seconds or so is an annoying distraction.

Seems to get better for a day or so right after I re-download Silverlight, but today makes more than ten times I have had to do so in the past six months; the third time in two weeks. I have tried using Chrome, Firefox and IE, with no discernable difference in performance, regardless of the browser used.

Don't know if Silverlight has anything to do with video playback regularly not working on other sites, but I'm inclined to believe it does, because Silverlight bites.

With a new laptop, netflix worked great! Better than my older (about 2 years old) laptop. This older laptop had silverlight installed. Then netflix required silverlight to play a movie. This is when the problems started. Most notably, the audio and video never seam to sync properly. Most annoying, the frequent message that "The plug-in silverlight has failed." which of course requires a reboot.

Summary

Do not install silverlight or any other microsoft program for that matter. Microsoft is dead and propogating this death by continuing to use microsoft products is inhuman and cruel. Let microsoft die a peaceful death and move on. Maybe some day microsoft will realize they no longer have a legitimized-monopoly and need to actually write software that works!

As noted above I did need to install this to watch a lecture. Despite going to the webpage 2 hours prior to the lecture it only told me I needed to install it when the lecture started - 20 minutes, 3 installation attempts and a restart later it finally worked (after I searched for 'couldn't load plug ins' and got some advice). By this point I'd missed 20 mins of the lecture which couldn't be restarted and I'm so frustrated I'm ready to hurl the computer out of the window!!! Really annoyed and will be removing the installation as soon as lecture is finished.

Easy to install. No error(s) and no problem(s) with this version 5 on the contrary to earlier versions with corrupted files and errors when installing. My PC does not start slower with SilverLight on it. You can uninstall SilverLight via Control Panel, Software.

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